COMMUNITY: Away from usual script, execs show another side

Karen Evans, the Office of Management and Budget's administrator for e-government and IT, is not known to be mushy. Her businesslike persona is familiar to CIOs, IT staff members and even contractors.

But at times she has shown emotion about subjects or people'particularly her kids'and has been generous in her praise. One such occasion occurred this month at a breakfast meeting on the Financial Management Line of Business.

With John Sindelar, the General Services Administration's soon-to-be-retired deputy associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy, in attendance, Evans paid tribute to the 33-year federal employee and key member of the e-government and LOB initiatives.

'John is a guy behind the scenes,' Evans told an audience of about 100 people. 'He really loved the LOBs and made them a reality.'

The praise for Sindelar, who has weathered good and bad times over five years in his current job, should not go unnoticed. While Evans didn't say it outright, her strong respect for Sindelar was obvious.

Kevin Carroll, the Army's head of the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, has to have a sense of humor. He runs one of the busiest IT offices in the Army, with more than 600 employees working on 20 programs, including the Army Knowledge Online portal, the Logistics Modernization Program and the enterprise software consolidation initiative. On top of that, he is a popular speaker, frequently quoted by the press.

But through all of this, Carroll, who has been in government for 30 years, is able to poke fun at himself and his co-workers.[IMGCAP(2)]At a recent luncheon highlighting PEO-EIS programs, Carroll put up a PowerPoint presentation about how he and his team feel about contract protests.

He represented protests as alligators, and he used Batman-style starbursts to 'bam,' 'zap' and 'pow' the alligators away. He then showed Lee Harvey, one of three PEO-EIS deputies, running from the snapping alligators.

And finally, he showed Col. Tom Hogan, another deputy, boxing with and knocking out a donkey. (Carroll quickly pointed out that the donkey was 'not a Democrat, by the way.')

Besides lightening up the lunch, Carroll also accomplished a technical feat rarely seen anywhere: an enjoyable PowerPoint presentation.